Like every other high school senior, I'm ready for school to be over. I'm over high school and I just want the freedom of summer and I want to go to college. But Jesse's ship out date got moved forward to June 14th, meaning that we graduate, we have a few days together, we have his grad party on the 13th, and then he leaves for Paris Island until September. I have abandonment issues and I'm not good at being left behind. I want school to be over, but at the same time, I need this month to just crawl by so I can have as much time with him as possible. Because despite what he says, deep inside I know he's gonna be different after boot camp. This isn't like going away to the Army or the Air Force. They do things at Paris Island that he won't even tell me about. I was talking to a former Sgt. at the banquet in Pittsburgh we went to, and he told us that The Marines are the only branch that still turn a blind eye to hazing and physical punishment. They get you up in the middle of the night and make you run for hours in the cold in the swamps. If you shiver, they throw buckets of ice water on you and scream in your face. If you still don't preform like they want you to, the next day they'll send you to the whiskey locker, where they'll beat you. I'm allowed to write him a letter once a week, but they censor his letters to make sure he isn't saying anything about how he's being treated. Jesse has wanted to be a Marine all his life, so I keep my mouth shut, but inside I'm horrified. And I'm terrified.
I'm gonna call my dad today. I don't know why...I just feel like I should.
i wouldnt worry too much about him, if he's wanted it all his life, he knows whats coming. when i planned on going to west point and sniper school, i looked forward to that treatment. builds character. makes you hardened for battle. just look at it this way...its the marines. its not the Spetsnaz. they lived by the theory that if a man dies in training, good. it means he was too weak for combat anyway.
ReplyDeleteI needed to accept or reject Pitt's admission before I would have found out from West Point whether or not I was accepted, so I guess I just took the safe road...
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